


The All-Nighter Before Christmas

by monochrome_agalma



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Canaan-era library sex, F/F, Frottage, Harrow doesn't know what coffee is, Holidays, Ianthe just wants to be a dark academia protag, Library Sex, POV Second Person, This probably doesn't really count as Explicit because it mostly ends in gay frustration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:27:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28175400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monochrome_agalma/pseuds/monochrome_agalma
Summary: Precious few things could tear Harrowhark Nonagesimus away from a good, bleary-eyed all-nighter; a Fifth House holiday party did not even make the list.One of those romcoms where an uptight workaholic meets a mysterious stranger in a coffee shop who teaches her the true meaning of Christmas. Except it’s Harrow and Ianthe and they just fool around in a library.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51
Collections: The Locked Tomb Holiday Smut Festival 2020





	The All-Nighter Before Christmas

Precious few things could tear Harrowhark Nonagesimus away from a good, bleary-eyed all-nighter. The explicit instruction of the King Undying, perhaps, or the opportunity to look Ortus Nigenad straight in the face and say, “actually, you’ve substituted an anapest in that line where there should a trochee, now the meter’s all off.” 

A Fifth House holiday party did not even make the list. 

“Party” was a bit of a stretch, you had to admit. It was, according to Abigail Pent, an experimental reconstruction of a pre-Resurrection holiday that she had unearthed in the Canaan House records. Cystmas, was it? It sounded like a minor animaphiliac feast day to you and you possessed neither the luxury nor the interest in wasting time on rituals of the flesh. The libraries took higher priority. A little puffed up with your own preemptive sense of productivity, you had uncharacteristically assented to Gideon’s request that “maybe the one of us who doesn’t hate fun could make an appearance.” Gideon Nav among the academics? You would give it about fifteen minutes before she left to go do push-ups in a corner somewhere.

This was how you found yourself nearly alone in the Canaan House library. Your only companions were Ianthe Tridentarius, slumped artfully across the room from you like some kind of haunted marionette with its strings cut, and the bundle of blankets and papers that had become a permanent Sixth House installation, parked on an armchair in front of the fireplace. Oftentimes you would find Palamedes Sextus asleep in this drab little habitat; oftentimes you would find it empty, if not still approximately necromancer-shaped. You hadn’t bothered to check tonight. 

It was around midnight when a little First House construct came clattering politely into the library. It deposited a tray on one of the long central desks and paced back off as you came over to investigate. The tray held four ceramic cups filled with steaming brown liquid and a brief, handwritten note.

_A little pick-me-up for you zealous young scholars. If the desire should seize you for something a little stronger, you know where the festivities are._

_Ho ho ho (1),_

_The House of the Fifth_

Below was an indecipherable collection of trills and flourishes you surmised to be the signatures of Abigail Pent and Magnus Quinn. Below that was a footnote:

_1\. “Ho ho ho” appears to be a post-verbal incantation, spoken by the tutelary deity of Christmas to ensure an auspicious holiday._

Ah, “ _Christ_ mas.” 

You reached for one of the ceramic cups and found the long, arachnid hand of the pale Third House adept on yours. You jerked your hand back with a swiftness instinctive to you, but apparently suggestive to Ianthe; you could have sworn she was quirking an eyebrow at you. You frowned, claimed another cup, and returned to your spot in the mouldering crevasses of the library stacks.

The Fifth’s offering turned out to be a warm, bitter potion. Its almost sludgy consistency was somewhere between your two best loved Ninth beverages, cave water and snow leek juice, which you found both unpleasant and strangely nostalgic. Within ten minutes of your first sip, you noticed your muscles start to judder and spark. Within fifteen, the sour sting of bile was nagging at the walls of your esophagus and you began to feel like your skin was attempting to vibrate its way off your bones. Within twenty, you had determined that whatever neurotoxin the Fifth necromancer had laced this tonic with, it was a mild one and posed no real threat to your life or your productivity. 

At least, under optimal conditions. The barbed and flickering gaze of Ianthe Tridentarius somewhat exacerbated your potion-induced jitteriness. By the third time she knocked a book from her table in faux-clumsiness, you began to wonder in earnest if she had been planted by Abigail Pent to hinder your work. After the fourth time, you glimpsed the smug ghost of a grin flash across her smug ghost of a face when you startled. Another, worse paranoia crept into your head: Ianthe just wanted to see you jump. 

You also realized with a sinking feeling that Ianthe’s tour of petty chaos had brought her to the far end of the bone-paneled bookcase before which you stood. She closed one purple eye, then flicked her tongue across her lips. It took you a moment to process this reptilian gesture as a wink. You bristled under your robes.

“You look stressed, Ninth,” she said.

“I believe,” you retorted, “I am experiencing an appropriate amount of stress for an individual operating under the injunctions of the Emperor. You ought to try stress sometime, Princess Ianthe, you might find it edifying.”

She paused, puffed a stray lock of hair out of her face, and slid ever closer. 

“I should have known this would fly over your head. They really keep you cloistered away on that Godforsaken excuse for a planet. But whatever will come of our meaningful contact over the coffee? Surely we can’t let that quintessential meet cute go to waste.”

“I don’t have the time, Tridentarius.” You started to turn away but she was already hovering over your right shoulder.

“You don’t know how this goes? Two promising necromantic scholars, pride of our fields — for the purposes of narrative, we shall admit bone sorcery as a field, if a particularly dull one — striving for top marks and letting off steam with some illicit fraternization in the library at night? Never got around to reading any of those edgy boarding-school romances? Certainly not the most _edifying_ genre, but it’s probably the best cultural contribution to come from the Seventh House in the last half-myriad. None of this ringing a bell?”

You didn’t need to have choked down any Seventh frivolity to know what she was getting at. She wanted a cheap little carnal thrill — in the Lord’s own libraries! — and she was using scholarly stress as a pretext. You _were_ stressed. You were tired, too, but your hands were buzzing from poison and your mind was racing from — also just poison, you were sure. Ianthe’s sallow features, the sunken hollows of her eyes and high cheeks, their usual mild corpsiness thrown into deeper relief in the library’s dim firelight, these were mere inconveniences to you, nothing more. If a few minutes of slobbering over your face was what would send her away, she could have it. Perhaps an unwise decision, with consequences in the short term, but you could deal with a little petty social awkwardness in the face of a big-picture goal. Frankly, you could see no plausible future in which the necromantic dilettante before you became a lyctor. You probably wouldn’t have to deal with her for more than a few months. 

Propelled by the force of your midnight rationalizations, you fisted one fluttering, adrenaline-filled hand in her lapel and dragged her mouth down to meet yours. She made the tiniest peep of surprise — you had to admit, that felt good —before grinning against you and kissing you back. She draped her arms over your shoulders and cupped the back of your head, fingers playing at the short scruff of hair at the base of your skull. She deepened the kiss more quickly than you had mentally prepared yourself for, drawing her tongue wetly over your lips. They parted, slightly — that was odd, who told them to do that? — and she slid her tongue into your mouth. 

You felt very hot then, and suddenly there was sweat at your temples. One of your teeth knocked lightly against Ianthe’s and you decided to focus on that, the familiar clack of bone on bone. You swept the tip of your own tongue methodically over her lower jaw, over lateral and central incisors, lateral again, a canine so unexpectedly sharp you thought it might slice up your tongue, if only for a moment. The keen little spire of Ianthe Tridentarius’ left lower canine sent a chill down through you, closely followed by a similar downward migration of the heat in your face. You must have squirmed a little because Ianthe saw fit to bite down on your lower lip. You let out a low, drawn out little sound. A moan, you were forced to admit. Ianthe teased at your lip again and again you moaned, releasing your vise-grip on her lapel and bringing both your hands to rest on her hips. 

First, Ianthe pressed into your hands, filling your palms with the pleasant roundness of her iliac crests. Then she took a firm step forward and you were pressed against the back wall at the end of the long row of bookshelves. She dropped her head to start nibbling down your neck, almost a little too hard, but each enameled scrape of those canines against your throat reduced your prefrontal cortex momentarily to jelly. 

Over Ianthe’s lowered head, you could get a pretty good view of the armchair by the fireplace that may or may not have contained Palamedes Sextus. If he was there, he must have been asleep, for the heap of assorted grey textiles only moved very slightly and with the regularity of slumbering breath. Then again, any motion could have been a trick of firelight on fabric. 

“Is Palamedes Sextus in that chair behind us,” you found yourself asking, “or has he perfected reverse psychometry and fitted his blankets to his shape in his absence?” 

This probably would have been a better put down if your voice hadn’t been so damn breathy, if Ianthe hadn’t been licking up and down your collarbone in a way you were reasonably certain was excessive, even given the circumstances. She barely paused to answer, “Would you care if he were behind us?” 

“Would I care if Palamedes Sextus, Master Warden of the Library, were here to witness the Mouth of the Emperor attached to my neck like some kind of profligate lamprey?” 

The Mouth of the Emperor did not register your sarcasm, merely asked again between nibbles, “Would you? Might get into his head a little.” 

By way of answer, you undid the topmost button of Ianthe’s shirt — rather low cut for your tastes — and worked a hand inside to brush over her breast. You grazed a thumb against her nipple, already hard, and felt her take in a sharp breath at your neck. She tried to reach for you in turn, but layers and layers of bone and black cloth stood between your chest and her long, probing fingers. For a moment you thought you saw her brow furrow, raising fractures in the disaffected mask she kept up with the same practiced regularity as you wore your black and alabaster death’s head. It was another small triumph, to think that you had wiped away her paint. 

A short-lived victory, as it turned out. 

Ianthe raised her head again, resumed her usual smirk, then looped one arm around your waist and drove a knee between your legs. You swallowed a yelp, semi-successfully. Your hand that was not palming clumsily at Ianthe’s breast was scrabbling against the wall behind you. Your hips moved with automatic force. You thrusted down onto Ianthe, hard. You gasped. You felt, with some chagrin, your eyes rolling inexorably back in their sockets. You fumbled for your next move and settled for pinching Ianthe’s nipple with all the force your spindly necromancer’s fingers could muster. She laughed, a little breathily, and pressed her leg harder against you. You searched for something, anything to keep you from grinding against Ianthe with complete and utter abandon, but she pressed her advantage. 

“I knew you’d turn out to be fun after all, tomb witch. Coronabeth couldn’t believe that you’d piqued my interest. Said I should go after Camilla the Sixth instead.” 

It was all you could manage to spit out, “Why not go bother Camilla the Sixth then?” 

“Frankly, I didn’t think she’d be down to clown.” 

“ _I_ would not be _‘down to clown_ ,’” you said, with your hand cupping Ianthe’s left tit. 

“And yet!” Ianthe replied, with her thigh pressed between yours. 

At the mention of his cavalier’s name, you suddenly became very self-conscious about the possible presence of the Sixth adept. With Ianthe leaning down into you, you could hardly make out the chair where maybe-Palamedes was maybe asleep — maybe awake at this point, you and Ianthe were hardly being discreet. Four cups on the Fifth House tray. Did that mean Camilla the Sixth might also be present, hovering somewhere like a silent grey wraith? Were the extra cups just a courtesy? If the Sixth weren’t spending the night in the library, were they downstairs at the party or — four cups — were they shirking the festivities, collecting keys in the facility? Your head was swimming, beginning to overheat with the effort of locating the Sixth while convincing your body that Ianthe’s leg against your cunt didn’t actually feel so perversely good as it seemed. You suddenly wanted very badly to leave, to rush downstairs and retrieve Gideon and get back to the real work of Canaan House, back to necromancy and trials, not bullshit power plays and Ianthe Tridentarius. You were all at once aware again of the static adrenaline buzz prickling over your skin, the juddering impulse to stamp your foot or shout or bite or run away. A creature of deprivation since birth, all this sweet and heady contact had made you sensitive and nauseous. You ached only half-pleasantly and Ianthe was _definitely_ going overboard with the licking now, plus she already had a hand snaking under your skirts, brushing at the too-hot skin of your thigh. 

You made a petty last ditch attempt to gain some face before bolting: “Your sister must be glad for a night’s reprieve from her gloomy little shadow. Does she often get to shine at full capacity, without you dimming the room?” 

Ianthe answered, slowly, her voice tinged with that canine sharpness, “If I’m her shadow, and if I’m enjoying the Reverend Daughter all pinned up against a dark library wall, I imagine Corona must be in some well-lit training room, having her fill of Gideon the Ninth.” 

You had made some bad missteps that night. Ianthe’s just now was by far the worst. 

You blinked and a skeletal arm unfurled from the bone panelling lining the bookshelf to your left. It caught a fistful of Ianthe’s hair and yanked her backward, as roughly as you could muster. The noise she made at this was downright foul, so you sent another construct, its hand knotted more thickly with bone, to clamp over her mouth. You didn’t dare look at her as you swept out of the library and down to the dining hall to locate your cavalier. 

It wasn't that you were _really_ so worried that Gideon was off making an ass of herself with Coronabeth Tridentarius. Ninth decorum simply required that some things be investigated, as a matter of course. 

You arrived to find Gideon making an ass of herself with Magnus Quinn, which was almost as bad. Their idiocy was blessedly chaste — again, not that you had suspected anything otherwise, or even cared. The Fifth house cavalier wore a bright scarlet cap, somehow both conical and floppy, trimmed with white. He was also making a valiant attempt at holding back a wheeze, because Gideon Nav was plopped with her entire muscular being on his lap. She was leaning in quite close to his face. She was saying something you couldn’t quite hear. 

“I believe my cavalier has had more than her fill of the festivities,” you boomed. Or you did your best to boom, then followed your pronouncement with an acid glare. You hoped the keen edge of your gaze pierced right through those ridiculous black glasses and gave Gideon’s eyes a good poking. She pouted, just slightly, at you. You did not budge. She shuffled off of Quinn’s lap — he sucked in a breath — and crossed to the doorway to join you. On her way out, she gave a quick nod to Palamedes Sextus and Camilla Hect, sat in a row with the Seventh necromancer, threading small berries and white puffs of grain into garlands. The coiled pile beside them looked like the product of a few hours’ work. 

You thought for a moment that your skin might boil and melt clean off of your face. 

You nearly barreled down the hallway to your rooms, Gideon clomping along behind you. If she was trying to win pity points with some sad leaden-pawed puppy routine, she was sorely misjudging your capacity to care about anything save the crimes you had just committed against your house and yourself. You had permitted an indulgence not yours to permit. You had done this because you had thought you could come away with your pride intact. Intact it was not. You had kissed Ianthe and let her kiss you because it was exhilarating and because it felt good. These were probably the two shittiest reasons you had ever done anything. 

By the time you arrived at your chambers, Gideon was no longer dragging her feet. For a moment she seemed to be handling her disappointment with a strangely un-Griddlesque grace. Then she turned to close the door and muttered, “Your paint’s fucked, by the way. You look like a squashed Sixth House birthday cake.” 

On another night, you might have flown into a rage at that comment, _what do you know about birthday cakes, you starveling orphan? Did Sextus teach you all about Sixth House confectionery while you were both ogling the Duchess of Rhodes?_ Tonight, you couldn’t bring yourself to bother. Maybe all of Abigail Pent’s ho-ho-ho-ing had manifested a holiday miracle. You slunk into bed, pulled the blankets up over your mouth and its damning grey smudges. 

You thought for a second of Ianthe Tridentarius, untangling herself from your skeletal fists as they disintegrated. Was she still in the library, slumped on the floor against the bookcase? Was she rubbing her scalp where you’d tugged at her hair? Was she biting her lip? Was she flushed? 

You snuffed out all the lights, as an added precaution — Ninth decorum and all. 

**Author's Note:**

> I feel badly about how rapidly this went from joke premise to mediumcore smut to gay repression but I guess that’s what the Locked Tomb Holiday Smutfest is all about. It also almost fully devolved into a deep dive on Abigail Pent’s citational practices, which I hope to return to someday. Got my requisite Euripides reference buried in there, got some metrical insults, and I'm coming to realize the reason I like writing from Harrow's POV so much is because she talks like a bombastic 19th Century philologist at all times. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone on TPT involved in organizing this collection!! Special shoutout to gallpall for beta-ing and being supportive of my decision to have Ianthe say bullshit like “down to clown.”


End file.
